Friday, February 26, 2010

Working through this process of developing our story with icons has been challenging. It started out as free hand drawings of our researched items that go along with our story. Following was the process of rendering our hand drawing into something more similar to an icon feel. This, however I was behind on. I wasn't getting it. Or, maybe I did get it, and just didn't want my icons to feel computer generated. I really like retro illustrations, and finding out later that Charley Harper was a large inspiration of mine, was interesting. I have an earlier post with some of his illustrations, and I didn't even know they were his. After tackling this problem, I headed into a better situation with heading in my geometric direction.

This, I was happy about, even though I did really enjoy my background element ones.

I thought of these as being a fun element added. And since my story is about a picnic gone bad, I felt that this detail may have been necessary, especially referencing old comic books. All in all thought the Geometric icons were more developed, and I enjoyed the look as well. It definitely reminded me of old illustrations, but was different enough to be my own idea.

Some things I could improve on, is probably still cohesion. I took the element of three and RAN with it. This was something help the cohesion of my icons, but the shapes are still very different. Using the solid forms was a nice element to use, so the weight of the icons looked similar, but some protrude out different directions, and some are really solid. A good example of this is my storm icon. The rain is not consistent with the rest of the group, and I feel some people even question what the raindrops are.

I'm not sure how I feel about going into crit tomorrow. I'm confident in my set, but after looking at my icons for this long, you just don't notice small detail, or BIG detail. It can go either way. I'm excited to move on with this project though, I know that pattern is going to be apart of this extended semester project, and I'm really looking forward to dealing with that. Here is my final set one more time!

Wednesday, February 24, 2010

Finalizing my icon set is exciting due to coming to an end, and actually seeing them as being mine.
I'm ending up with seven for crit on Friday, and the last one I'm adding to my set is an attacking bird.
here are some images from developing/finalizing my icons.

While finalizing our Icons this reading had me thinking about little detail and how I can make my icons cohesive, because that is obviously a problem, due my mini crits that I had with some other students. Paying attention to detail, and doing a lot of iterations is key in making icons. It's key in all design, really. Seeing that it's a good idea to get between 100-200 iterations/thumbnails really stopped me. I mean, I try and do a lot of iterations, but apparently it's not enough. It does make sense though, the more options you have they better the outcome.

As you can tell from my title of this post I am wanting to pursue the seven deadly sins, instead of the virtues. Not quite sure why I picked sins over virtues...just more compelled to mess around with the sins, I guess. I have a few different ideas about how I'd like to approach my project. I definitely want to have a consistent object/person within my photos to make it cohesive. So, the ideas I have are:
-Using my two roommates as models within each photograph, one being the sin and one being the virtue, or the opposite of the sin.
-Using myself as a model (this kind of makes me nervous, but interested due to me never being in front of the camera in my own project) and portraying the sins as a 50s housewife would see them. (I was inspired by the cheesy images you see now on magnets and little knick knacks)

I don't know about incorporating text within this idea, I thought it'd be interesting, but kind of too much like that one idea.

- I also was interested in using music lyrics within my images to portray different sins. I would use an object/person in theses images as well, but I'd try and add the text in different parts of the composition.

As of right now, I really like the idea of 2, but number 1 is also in the back of my mind. We'll see!

Working with vectoring my current icons, while adding in a couple new ideas is going! I'm happy with my current ideas, and feel like they are all heading in a good direction within my story.

I'm adding in a picnic basket, and some sort of bad weather to show that it was a picnic, and not just any picnic, but a terrible picnic. I'm needing to go around to other people within the studio to answer some questions about my icons, basically to see if they understand what my icons represent, and what kind of story I'm trying to tell. Let's hope that goes well. Here is the picnic basket that I'm working on:

I'll be adding the weather in soon, as well as either one or two more, not quite sure which may be the best to add. I have attacking birds, dog poop, and a swarm of bees. Maybe some opinions on which I should add to make the picnic more relevant?

The change one thing poster has come to an end, and no offense, but I'm grateful. This being my first poster it was an interesting process to go through. I started with SO many different ideas about different topics, then narrowing down to one idea, then developing different ideas for that one idea. I changed my poster multiple times (majorly). BUT I'm really glad I ended up with what I did. I remember one night I just thought I'd try this one composition out because I was sick of my "dog face" icons, and it worked much better. I think since this "first" poster idea is out of my head, and it has been done I'm really excited to move on and to try more and more. All in all, after a few tweaks that were made on Friday, I'm really happy with my end product. It was fun to add a gradient due to me not being experienced with them, and the type was fun to play with as well. I hope the message comes across powerful and clear. Here's the final product:

Monday, February 15, 2010

Working today in class was really nice, I finalized my lettering for his name, and decided the hand rendering type for the quote was illegible, and wasn't working out as well as I'd like. So, I used the movie font, Trajan pro! How appropriate, right? Here are some images with my process.

Working on finalizing the change one thing poster. I did most of the recommendations that were giving from the seniors. I made different types of paw prints, between a cat and dog, with scale size and placement. I decided not to add in other animals, just due to the most kinds of pets are cats and dogs that are being euthanized within shelters. I changed around the type by adding in some black words instead of using all white words within my phrase. I think that part of pretty successful.

All in all, I ended up going back to my original simple geometric paw print made of circles and ovals. It was the most direct and it was way less complicated. Here are some screen shots.

This was the one with all different types of paw prints, ultimately the numbers get distorted, and it look really sloppy, plus the density is a lot more difficult to render when there are so many different sizes within an are.

This is probably going to be my final one. I still think I like the type bigger, but...it does definitely detract the viewer of the important number at the top. Working the most important word/s as white worked well, because the viewer can associate all the bold information together.

I just liked the arrangement of this text. It doesn't communicate well enough though.

Friday, February 12, 2010

Going off of the earlier critique today that the seniors sat in on, was helpful, but also confusing. There was a lot of good suggestions made, and I'm definitely going to keep on iterating on those suggestions until I find something I'm confident in. Some of the comments made were of course about how my white type is so loud, and it being the main focus, straying away from the important number. Which I was definitely concerned with, so I agree with them there. Also, it being white doesn't help, so turning it a light beige, or some even possibly black, with the right positioning would be a good idea. Another comment made was integrating more various types of paw prints. Signifying between a cat and dog, would show more depth and be a stronger communication tool. I'm not sure about integrating different kinds of animals though. Such as, birds, hamsters, or bunnies. I feel they would get lost within the main idea of the most animals being euthanized are cats and dogs. BUT, I want to try it. It MAY look really good.

Thursday, February 11, 2010

Iterating for this poster has been an adventure, I feel I've gone through 5 different main ideas to finally get to the one I think I'm going to use. It definitely shows me that iterations are key and may or may not lead you in a good direction, it's all at chance really. But, the more you develop an idea the faster it will come across to other people in society. I did a lot of different type iterations for this idea, but what was said in class is true, there is no real sense to the hierarchy of type.

So I headed in my final direction:

I'm still not completely confident in this idea, I feel that the first thing I look at is the white type; but black wouldn't be legible, and gray just doesn't look good. I wonder if reading this poster backwards may be okay. It may intrigue the viewer to understand the numbering better by noticing the white type first. Then again, I could be full of it.

Wednesday, February 10, 2010

Here's a pretty good general idea for how my constructed image project is going.

I'm pretty happy with the idea. I think the movie poster idea came across quite apparently and the hand made feel is fun. There is much to be improved upon though. Such as, the text is obviously too hand rendered to the point where it is almost child like, and the quote text needs to be re-evaluated. Also, I need to use a different cup for the water. Just general piecing it together in a more craft aware manner is what I'm thinking it needs.

Here's some more inspiration for my icons set for the problematic picnic. I'm still feeling a little overwhelmed with this idea of drawing and making these complex forms so simple, because i tend to go to far with how simplistic, or it's just too sketchy. I'll be doing a lot of drawing within the next couple days to try and get my aesthetic down with a lot of other idea's. Working with negative space, and organic forms is really intriguing to me too. Iteration, Iterations, Iterationssss.

The color is nice within this one because of the way it's offset, that's something obviously that we're not doing right now, but it's good to keep in mind. I also like how each form is rough, but refined.

The repeating patterns within the icons is interested. I'm not sure that I could incorporate a repeating element within all of my objects because of the versatility of them.

The general shape of these birds are nice, way too abstract, but I really like the layering technique.

Again, the way each of these patterns use the idea of curves, and geometrical shapes at the same time.

Again, shape. Simple, but complex.

The beetle form in this one is what caught my eye, due to one of my objects being ants.